This paper introduces the topic of “Collaborative Distance” within Distributed Collaboration as being an introduction to this Special Issue on Collaborative Working Environments1 (CWE). In this paper, the authors discuss various related concepts, identified during an extensive literature review, on both proximity and distance in distributed collaboration. Then, a Collaborative Distance Framework (CDF) is proposed in deriving its four dimensions and related factors from the existing body of knowledge. The following section discusses the interest of such a CDF and introduces the articles published in this special issue. The concluding section discusses the articles’ contributions, limitations and future work as well as recommendations for future research in this area.

This paper introduces the topic of “Collaborative Distance” within Distributed Collaboration as being an introduction to this Special Issue on Collaborative Working Environments1 (CWE). In this paper, the authors discuss various related concepts, identified during an extensive literature review, on both proximity and distance in distributed collaboration. Then, a Collaborative Distance Framework (CDF) is proposed in deriving its four dimensions and related factors from the existing body of knowledge. The following section discusses the interest of such a CDF and introduces the articles published in this special issue. The concluding section discusses the articles’ contributions, limitations and future work as well as recommendations for future research in this area.

Some lecturers start their sessions by reviewing or summarizing the main contents covered in the previous session. In general, this review involves the teacher exposing the main concepts and, in some cases, asking about them. This approach, which could be called Check-Reinforce Introduction (CRI), might be seen as having one main drawback; namely, the restricted feedback that lecturers may receive from students due to shyness. Bearing in mind this limitation, we have created what we have called the Classroom Response System CRI (C2RI), which takes advantage of a smartphone-based Classroom Response System (CRS) to obtain more feedback from students during the CRI. We conducted a five-year study on teaching related to technological issues in order to obtain empirical data on whether students consider the use of CRI useful. This is, to our knowledge, the first study involving empirical quantitative data. For this purpose, during the study, we applied the new method (C2RI) to assess whether students prefer C2RI or CRI and whether students' level of attention, motivation, and performance improved or not. Our findings show that the majority of students consider both methods useful, but the scores are higher in C2RI and they perceive higher level of attention with this method. We have also discovered that their motivation to study between lectures decreased using C2RI, which correlates with a slight decrease in student performance on exams, concluding that this method has to be designed in a way that does not create a false sense of confidence in the students.

No abstract

In this article we introduce the main research lines concerning CSCW and groupware, which are forming the core foundation of Collaborative Working Environments (CWE). Furthermore, we introduce the problematic aspects in CWE and the features and recommendations for the integration of CWE in organizations. Through this issue readers will learn new paradigms for the building of CWE as well as directions for measuring and planning the implementation of collaboration within enterprises with the aim of obtaining the best performance. Finally, a brief introduction of the three articles of this special issue on CWE is presented.